Alm Family Openly Deals With Nightmare

December 25, 1993|By Barry Meisel, New York Daily News.

HOUSTON — When Jeff Alm was about 6, his family moved from Rye, N.Y., to a new home in Marlboro, N.J. The furniture hadn't been delivered, the cartons were still unpacked, when Jeff's father Larry noticed that one of his three children had scribbled an obscenity on a freshly painted wall.

Debbie, four years older than Jeff, certainly hadn't done it. It had to be Jeff or Lance, who was two years older than Jeff, and Jeff's idol. Larry and his wife Betty decided to let the police teach their mischievous boys a lesson. Due to the gravity of the offense, they said, the cops had no choice but to haul the two imps down to the station. At the interrogation, Jeff submitted his alibi.

"It wasn't me," he pleaded. "I can't even spell."

Lance was fingered. He admitted his crime. And at a stern and somber family meeting, mom and dad offered amnesty. "I still remember my speech," Lance Alm recalled. "I said, `Everybody gets a chance to make one mistake.' "

Jeff Alm's last mistake was fatal. Driving on an elevated Houston highway with his best friend, Sean Lynch, at 2:30 a.m. Dec. 14, the Houston Oilers defensive lineman lost control of his black Cadillac and struck a guard rail. Lynch was thrown from the car to his death. Alm, who was uninjured, dialed 911 on his cellular phone, called out to his friend, then used the shotgun he kept in his car to commit suicide while a dispatcher was still on the line.

Both men were 25.

Six days later, Alm's grief-stricken family gathered in Houston to begin settling his estate. Jeff's mother, Betty Robson, who divorced Larry Alm in 1977, was joined by her second husband, Bill Robson, who knew Jeff for 14 years. Larry Alm, a marketing consultant in Burnsville, Minn., was there. So was sister Debbie O'Connor, 29, a 4th-grade teacher. Her husband Mike remained in Orland Park, where the family has lived since the mid-1970s, where Jeff starred at Sandburg High. Lance, 27, a Chicago commodities broker, couldn't bring his wife, who is having a difficult pregnancy with their first child.

For two hours Monday night, the Alm family grieved openly in a hotel suite minutes from the southwest Houston townhouse in which Jeff lived. They laughed and cried and told stories and tried to explain how they plan to struggle through this unimaginable tragedy.

"A mother's worst nightmare is the loss of a child," said Betty, dignified and controlled.

They wanted everybody to know that two cherished people died, not just a pro football player. David Lynch, Sean's brother, said last week that his family wanted to let it be known that they lost two people, too. "My parents aren't handling this very well," David said over the phone at his parents' Orland Park home.

The Alms agreed it would be cathartic to talk openly in front of one another. They didn't balk at sharing their feelings even when asked if they were angry at Jeff for making such a disastrous decision, for being so careless, for changing their lives forever.

"I think I'm over being mad at him," Lance said. "I went through a mad stage in the beginning, and now I've learned to say Jeff couldn't live with this. He didn't do this to me or to my family. He did this because he thought that's what he needed to do at the time. Unfortunately, that was a mistake we can't take back."

"I'm angry," Debbie admitted. "For purely selfish reasons. Because of what he did to us. I'm on a roller coaster of emotions. I'm sad all the time, and I hurt most of the time. When I see what it's done to our family, I get angry.

"My husband and I decided the next time we see Jeff we're going to have to slap him around a little bit. This is a grisly thing to say, but before we left the wake, Mike and I both gave the coffin a little whack on the side. We decided he needed a slap."

"I think I've gotten beyond being mad," Betty said. "I feel devastated. Life will never be the same. I feel like a piece of my heart was torn out."

"I don't think I've been angry yet," Larry said. "I was looking forward to Jeff finishing playing football. Football is this terrible two-edged sword. It's given us so much pleasure and gratification. On the other hand, it's taken Jeff away from us for every holiday for the last seven or eight years.

"I was really looking forward to his finishing playing ball so we could get on with the rest of our lives and maybe we could all have a normal life together and he could be like everybody else. Football took all that, and football gave nothing back."

Lance has handled most of the arrangements since the tragedy. He has been the family's liaison to the Houston police investigative team, led by Sgt. Johnny Moore.